Magical Plants

Description Source: Ultimate Wilderness
Magic plants are a new type of magic item that are cultivated rather than constructed. Cultivating one requires the Cultivate Magic Plants item creation feat found on page 109.

To cultivate a magic plant, you need a place to plant it. This usually requires a 30-foot-radius area of nutrient-rich soil and a constant supply of water and light for larger magic plants, and it requires a 10-foot-radius area and similar soil, water, and light requirements for smaller plants. Most magic plants bear fruit, seeds, or sprouts that, once mature, replicate the effects of a spell when eaten, thrown, or used in some other way. A magic plant’s price depends on the spell effect it replicates. The cultivation cost of a magic plant is half the plant’s price.

The yield per day is the number of fruit, seeds, or effects the plant generates per day during its growing season. For instance, a goodberry bush yields six berries per day. The growing season multiplier is equal to the number of growing seasons the plant has in a single year. Growing seasons are continuous 13-week-long periods confined to one of the four seasons (spring, summer, fall, and winter). If a season is longer than 13 weeks, the growing season needs not be continuous. Magic plants cannot be in a growing season for longer than 52 weeks, and a plant that has four consecutive growing seasons produces fruit, seeds, or effects year round. A magic plant generates its effects only during a growing season. Outside of a growing season, some plants will still grow but remain barren (such as a fruit tree), while others may wither and regrow in the following year (such as vines).

The initial planting and care of a magic plant requires 1 week per 1,000 gp of the plant’s cultivation cost. At the end of this period, the plant reaches maturity and its benefits are fully realized, assuming that the maturity culminates within the growing season. Once picked, the product of a magical plant stays potent for 24 hours. If not picked within 1 week, fruit or any other product of the plant rots into a useless (and often smelly) sludge—though rare fruits may have longer periods of potency. Harvested fruit can’t be kept magically potent for longer than 1 day, even by effects that preserve foodstuffs.

Typically, a creature must consume fruit produced by a magic plant to gain its effect. In these cases, the fruit’s eater is both the caster and the target of its spell effect. Other fruits must be thrown to generate their effects, or they might have some other activity involved in their use.

In addition to paying the costs to cultivate a magic plant, the cultivator must have sufficient ranks in Knowledge (nature). For most magic plants, the number of ranks required is tied directly to the strength of the plant’s aura—1 rank for a plant with a faint aura, 3 ranks for a plant with a moderate aura, and 6 ranks for a plant with a strong aura.

Magic plants can be destroyed like other magic items. A tree has a hardness of 5 and 120 hit points, while bushes and vines have hardness 3 and 50 hit points. When a magical plant is destroyed, any fruit (or similar consumables) it has produced remain active for 1 week before rotting. A character that succeeds at a DC 20 Knowledge (nature) check can harvest one-tenth of the plant’s value in useful materials from a destroyed magic plant.

A magic plant can be uprooted and moved, but it dies within a day unless it is magically treated with an effect such as gentle repose or temporal stasis. Uprooting a magic plant requires Strength sufficient to move it, 4 hours of work, and a successful DC 20 Knowledge (nature) check. An average magic tree weighs 500 pounds, while smaller plants, such as bushes or vines, average 50 pounds.